Pope to Lend 'Decisive Voice' to Growing Catholic Sex Abuse Debate
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A top Vatican official says Pope Benedict XVI will speak with a "clear and decisive voice" when he addresses clerical sex abuses in Ireland in a forthcoming letter.
Benedict is expected to release his letter soon in response to decades of systematic abuse in church-run schools and other institutions in predominantly Roman Catholic Ireland.
The abuse scandal has since spread to other European countries, most significantly Germany, the pope's homeland.
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Archbishop Rino Fisichella told an Italian newspaper that the zero-tolerance policy that Benedict wants to implement is a "moral obligation."
Fisichella was quoted as saying Monday that measures introduced in the U.S. church, similarly rocked by an abuse scandal years ago, are making a difference.